PHOLAS. 75 



reckon them a delicacy. In the neighbourhood of 

 Dieppe, a great many women and children, each pro- 

 vided with an iron pick, are employed to collect the 

 Pholades, either to sell in the market, or to be used as 

 bait by the fishermen. .»- 



The pholas is remarkable for its phosphorescent pro- 

 perty. This is noticed by Pliny, lib. 9. c. 61. Aris- 

 totle and Athenaeus have mentioned the pholas, but in 

 too slight a manner to be worthy of observation. 



Before we quit the general remarks on multivalve 

 shells, it will be proper to observe, that an Italian na- 

 turalist, M. Giceni, has described and figured what he 

 conceived to be a new genus in the class of multivalves, 

 under the title of Descrizione di una nuova Famiglia e 

 di un nuovo Genere di Testacei. Neapoli 1783. It 

 would have been well if the author of the above tract 

 had confined himself to the description only of the shell; 

 but he has indulged in a tale of the habits and manners 

 of the animal part of his subject, which is quite ridicu- 

 lous. The subject of M. Giceni's paper is the gizzard 

 of the Bulla lignaria, which is testaceous, and when 

 separated from the body of the animal, may readily be 

 mistaken for a shell. So far the description of M. 

 Giceni, who probably found the substance on the sea 

 shore, is excusable ; but when he gravely relates as a 

 fact, what he at the same time knows to be false, it 

 becomes the duty of the naturalist to expose his 

 error, that subsequent writers may not be misled. 

 After describing the three valves with which this 

 supposed shell is provided, M. Giceni proceeds to tell us 

 that the animal has a long trachea, or trunk, through 

 which it respires and receives its food; that it is born 

 and lives under the sand ; and that when it wishes to rise 



